For the first time, the Vatican will display an explicitly pro-life Nativity featuring 25,000 ribbons for babies saved from abortion, blessed by Pope Leo XIV on Dec 15.
Newsroom (11/12/2025 Gaudium Press ) In a historic shift in Vatican Christmas tradition, an explicitly pro-life Nativity scene titled “Gaudium Nativity” (Joyful Nativity) will be unveiled next week in the Paul VI Audience Hall and personally blessed by Pope Leo XIV during an official ceremony on December 15. The display will remain through the Christmas season and until the close of the Jubilee Year of Hope.
Created by Costa Rican religious artist Paula Sáenz Soto in collaboration with the international pro-life organization 40 Days for Life, the artwork fuses Byzantine iconography with classical figurines. Its most striking element is the replacement of traditional straw with more than 25,000 ribbons, each symbolizing a child saved from abortion through the prayers and sidewalk counseling of 40 Days for Life volunteers.
A pregnant figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary will stand in the scene until Christmas Day, when it will be replaced by the traditional image of Our Lady adoring the Infant Jesus, underscoring the Church’s teaching that Christ was truly present as an unborn child.
“This needs to be something everyone knows about,” Sáenz Soto said in an interview with 40 Days for Life. “I asked myself, ‘Where will this cry of babies be heard most loudly in the world? Well, in the Vatican.’ This is the loudest pro-life demonstration ever heard from the Vatican.”
Originally approved under Pope Francis for display in 2027, the timeline was dramatically advanced to 2025 by the new pontificate, making “Gaudium Nativity” the first Nativity scene blessed by Pope Leo XIV.
The artist attributes the acceleration to divine intervention amid rising hostility toward pro-life advocates. “This year several events have occurred, a lot of violence… the deaths of certain people who defended life,” Sáenz Soto said, in an apparent reference to the assassination of prominent U.S. conservative and pro-life leader Charlie Kirk. She also cited public statements by some Catholics defending abortion as evidence of growing confusion within the Church.
“Of course, we’ve been fighting this battle for years… and thank God abortion clinics have been shut down, and many lives have been saved,” she continued. “But I feel that especially this year, with all the violence, something moved God’s heart and He said, ‘This has to be done now.’”
The 2025 exhibit stands in marked contrast to several recent Vatican Nativity scenes that drew widespread criticism. Notably, the 2017 “Nativity of Mercy” included a naked man and a corpse—images so graphic that Facebook rejected photographs of the display as “sexually provocative” content.
With its unambiguous celebration of unborn life and its prominent placement in the heart of global Catholicism, the “Gaudium Nativity” is being described by its creators as the Vatican’s clearest pro-life statement in modern memory.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Infocatholica
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